Meeting of maestros

BILLED AS "an inspirational musical dialogue", the teaming up of legendary British jazz saxophonist Evan Parker with the "Carnatic wizard'' Kadri Gopalnath recently in six centres of England - London (twice), Chelmsford, Brighton, Manchester and Leeds - drew rave reviews from the British press, claiming their fusion as "taking the language of the saxophone into new realms". Parker uses techniques like circular breathing to create new sounds through his instrument. Kadri is the first to introduce this instrument into classical Indian music.

According to Kadri, the programmes had good response from British music lovers and also the Indian and Sri Lankan population. This fusion of two different streams of music, he claims, is like an east-west encounter on a global level. There was also a conference on the new inventions on saxophone, in which two American artistes also took part. Kadri explained the common factors in the Carnatic and Western classical styles with respect to scale and swaras of ragas; for instance their C-major is our Sankarabharanam and their pentatonic scales can be the same as our Mohanam or Hindolam. In fact, Kadri has printed matter which he always carries on his foreign trips, explaining such similarities and how to write the notations of our music in a Western style and also our variety of talas and how to present them in an easy-to-understand method with illustrations. The programme at Leeds? University was a great success and around 75 saxophonists there responded happily. Kadri gave lec-dems at all the centres. Though he arrived just a day before the first concert, he gave tips to Parker on how our ragas are developed in the concert and Parker also made a sincere effort to understand them; the second half of the concert when the two played together was a happy union. The concert tour was organised jointly by the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan and four other agencies.

The Bhavan conducts Carnatic music classes, in which the majority of students are from Sri Lanka and Kadri feels that in a decade or so if our music exists in Europe it would be because of these youngsters.

Being the son of a Nadaswaram artiste, Kadri learned to play the wind instrument on his own. It took him two years to get the proper Swarasthanas in it. Later, he improved his repertoire by learning under vocalist Gopalakrishna Iyer in Mangalore, before he came to Chennai and became a disciple of T.V. Gopalakrishnan. He constantly travels for concerts and also to teach in Bangalore and elsewhere besides Chennai. He has foreign students also; in fact he was invited to come and teach in England, but due to lack of time, he invited the youngsters to come here during their holidays. After his tour of England, he also performed in Geneva, Zurich and Paris. He continues to use the instrument presented by his father for all his concerts. He proudly shows a gold plated saxophone presented to him by Swami Shantananda of Temple of Fine Arts.

In 2001, in a UNESCO-sponsored programme in Paris, saxophonists from 180 countries will assemble to pay homage to Adolphe Sax of Belgium, who invented the instrument in 1840. Kadri will naturally be there.

LAKSHMI VENKATRAMAN

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